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Thursday, April 11, 2013

Adelide and her cousin Elder Spencer Christensen at the MTC

Adelide's letter April 11, 2013

My dearest family,

HOLY PACKAGES!!! You guys
made me feel like a queen! I am so grateful for the packages you put
together and for all of the mail I have received. I LOVE getting mail.
It makes my day 10x better! Wow st george sounded like a blast! I loved
that you told me all of the details of your hike in Zions. I can just
picture it-- so beautiful. I love hearing of your every day lives and I
feel so special to get a letter from my mommy almost every day. I hope
you don't feel like you have to write me everyday but I sure do enjoy
it!! I feel like your right here with me. Mom, your gift idea of the
t-shirts is PERFECT! The girls keep wanting to buy swedish shirts here
that are so ugly so they will be so happy when we get the shirts you
have made! We are all either a small or a medium :). I am so grateful
that you sent me the cousins emails. They are so fun and inspiring to
read and it makes me feel like I am truly not doing this work alone.
Will you send me some pictures of the family? Like your favorite ones of
hen, lil and han and of you and dad of course? I want more pictures to
look at!!! As for pictures from me... The cord you sent me will work
in Sweden but it wont work on these computers! We have to have a weird
SD card reader which I can get at the book store but they are all sold
out so I will get on that ASAP. I might just send you my sd card and
then you can send it back to me. Let me know what you think will work
best, otherwise you might not get any pics from me from the mtc...

Last week during gym time I was doing yoga by myself
and some italian sisters asked me if I would teach them so I became
really good friends with the italians and i started teaching them yoga!
The class went from two sisters one day to ten sisters the next day!
Every day at gym more sisters come and I lead a yoga/ abb class. hahaha
it is so funny. Everyone that is playing volleyball or basket ball just
stares at us like we are so weird but the sisters love it and i LOVE
IT! I have also been running a lot and it is so nice to have that time
to think. Thanks mom for calling the cafeteria haha there was a huge
sign on the door enterance that said "Adelide Christensen GO SEE THE
DIETITION" or however its spelled... hahaha so I went in and Diane
talked to me and told me that I could eat in this special little room
that has way healthy food! I was happy because I have litterally just
been eating a banana and peanut butter at every meal. So last night
I ate quinua and vegetables. yummmm.

MTC MIRACLES: Ok this is the dumbest story ever but it
left me and my companion laughing about it for days so I am going to
share it with you. We were both craving these huge ice cream snickers
bars and we both decided that we wanted the snickers one instead of
twix. So, I swipe my card and of course type in the numbers for the
twix... Which I can't eat because I am allergic so my companion was like
oh its fine I will just eat the twix and get you a snickers and I was
like, no you really don't have to d... ok thanks. So we go in our room
and we are eating them so fast because we had class in ten minutes and
my companion literally has like one bite left and she says, "this twix
bar doesn't even taste like a twix! it even has peanuts in it!" SO I go
over and look at it and dun da da dun! IT WAS A SNICKERS hahahahaha So
in the end we both got what we wanted and the snickers bar was wrapped
in a twix bar! HA. And she didn't even notice until it was almost gone!
HAHA we were dying. Truly a miracle.

Adelide's MTC District and another district going to Sweden on the same day. Only 2 Elders!

The work here is still hard but still fun. Everyday we
wake up and get to work! Lots of studying and lots of learning. Our
teachers will occasionally do funny things like make us walk around our
classroom building counting each of our steps in Swedish. haha it was so
hilarious- we were all taking huge steps so we didn't have to count as
high. They also had us run outside in our skirts and flats and up the
stairs and around the building and back to the class room to wake us up.
haha then they taught us about stress management which came at the
perfect time. We were all getting a littles stressed out with all of the
new lessons we will have to be teaching soon. Tomorrow we have to teach
3 times! ahhhh. But, I realized how much I really want to do this work
after we taught our investigator yesterday. We went from reading every
part of our lesson off of a paper to bringing in notes with only english
written on them! We went in with our lesson planned out in english and
while we were in there we slowly transfered everything into Swedish. It
was an amazing experience and although I know my sentences weren't
perfect, i felt the spirit so much stronger. We were able to look at our
investigators eyes and really speak to him, slowly and simply but it
made all of the difference. The hardest part is that there is so much
more that I want to tell him about (even though he isn't a real
investigator) but because I don't know all of the swedish to do that, I
just have to rely on the words that I know and hope that it will make
sense. It is a wonderful experience and I can't wait to teach real
investigators in Sweden.

I learn here each day not only how to be a better
missionary, but how to be a better person. The girls in my district are
all so excited to be mothers, and so am I. We talk often of how this
missionary experience will spiritually mature and prepare us to be the
mothers that we want to be. I can't imagine becoming a mother without
having the experience of serving a mission. I love the girls in my
district and we have become so close with each other. I love being able
to spiritually learn with them and share our testimonies with each
other. This week I have especially become close with the elders and
other sisters in the other district. I love the friendships we are
creating here as we are adapting to a different lifestyle.

GENERAL CONFERENCE aka an MTC holiday!! It was so
amazing to watch conference here at the MTC. So many of the talks spoke
directly to me and I loved all of the ones that you guys mentioned to me
in your letters. One of my favorite talks was by President Uchtdorf
during the Young Womans General Broadcast. READ IT. He talks about our
journey here on life. He says, "how is your journey going? Are you doing
all that you can to live up to who you want to become? I love asking
myself those questions daily. How is my journey going? Am I doing all
that I can to live up to who I want to become? Many times, my answer is
no. And when it is no, I write down lists of ways that I can improve.
This life is about improving. It is about finding our own ways to return
back to our Father in Heaven. When I am not doing the best that I can
do, I do not become upset with myself. Rather, I look at ways that I can
do it differently and try again the next day. I have always loved doing
this my whole life and i have been applying it more to my life while I
have been on my mission. At the end of Uchtdorf's talk, he says, "It is
not your responsibility to convert others, that is the Holy Ghosts
responsibility. But it is your responsibility to bare witness of this
gospel and to NEVER lower your standards." He also says, "Speak the
universal language. That language is love, the language that gets rid of
hatred and fear. It is a language of understanding, serving, and
comforting." This is exactly what I needed to hear this week. Swedish is
hard, and I feel at times that I am the worst in my class. I am
struggeling with memorizing and especially with conjugation but, I know
that I can speak the universal language of love. And through love, I
will be able to conect to the people of Sweden no matter how hard the
Swedish language is. I will be able to understand, serve, and comfort
the people and let them know that there is a plan for them here on
Earth. God commands us to be of good cheer and that is how I want to
live always. Cheerfully enjoying every thing that comes my way, no
matter how hard or long the road.

I LOVE YOU ALL. I am so grateful for you and your examples in my life. Thank you for your support.

1 comment:

Adelide - thank you for your amazing testimony - it shines in everything you say - in fact when i am on your blog my whole computer is lighter!!! i love it - i love the insight you have gained and that you are forging ahead on your own path - you - are - making - a - difference - YOGA - HEALTHY EATING - LOVE - thank you - we sure love you!!